Idris Elba has been surrounded by rumours he will be the next James Bond, but the actor admits the attention can sometimes be disheartening.
Elba talks about being linked to the huge franchise in an interview with Vanity Fair: “James Bond is a hugely coveted, iconic, beloved character that takes audiences on this massive escapism journey. Of course, if someone said to me, ‘Do you want to play James Bond?’ I’d be like, ‘Yeah!’ That’s fascinating to me.
“But it’s not something I’ve expressed, like, ‘Yeah, I wanna be the black James Bond.’ Because, by the way, we’re talking about a spy.”
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“If you really want to break it down, the more less-obvious it is, the better. You just get disheartened [about the rumours] when you get people from a generational point of view going, ‘It can’t be.’ And it really turns out to be the colour of my skin.
“And then if I get it and it didn’t work, or it did work, would it be because of the colour of my skin? That’s a difficult position to put myself into when I don’t need to.”
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Elba also talks about his success, insisting he’s definitely worked hard to get where he is.
“You know that whole ‘Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours’. I had put my work in. And so yeah, it was sort of like, crawl crawl crawl crawl c-r-a-w-l—stop—crawl—RUN! It really was that for me.”
